‘He says it’s so that his teeth don’t go crooked.’ Aslak Krongli shook his head, with laughter in his eyes, though not in his voice. ‘But it’s the only way to make sure they don’t fall out.’
‘Tell me, was that really dynamite he was carrying on his snow - mobile?’
‘You saw it,’ Krongli said. ‘Not me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are lots of residents up here who can’t quite see the romanticism of sitting for hours with a fishing rod by the mountain lakes, but who would like to have the fish they regard as their own on the dinner table.’
‘They chuck dynamite in the lakes?’
‘As soon as the ice has gone.’
‘Isn’t that somewhat illegal?’
Krongli held up his hands in defence. ‘As I said, I didn’t see anything.’
‘No, that’s true, you only live here. Have you got dynamite, too, by any chance?’
‘Just for the garage. Which I’m planning to build.’
‘Right. What about Utmo’s gun? Looked modern with the telescopic sights and so on.’
‘Certainly is. Utmo was good at hunting bears. Until he went half blind.’
‘I saw his eye. What happened?’
‘Apparently his boy spilt a glass of acid on him.’
‘Apparently?’
Krongli rolled his shoulders. ‘Utmo is the only person left who knows what happened. His son went missing when he was fifteen. Soon afterwards his wife disappeared as well. But that was eighteen years ago, before I moved up here. Since then Utmo has lived alone in the mountains, no TV, no radio, doesn’t even read the papers.’
‘How did they disappear?’
‘You tell me. There are lots of sheer drops around Utmo’s farm where you might fall. And the snow. The son’s shoe was found after an avalanche, but there was no sign of him after the snow melted that year, and it was strange to lose a shoe like that up in the snow. Some thought it was a bear. Though, as far as I know, there weren’t any bears up here eighteen years ago. And then there were those who reckoned it was Utmo.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘We-ell,’ Aslak said, dragging it out, ‘the boy had a bad scar on his chest. Folk reckoned he’d got that from his father. It was something to do with the mother, Karen.’
‘How so?’
‘They were competing for her.’
Aslak shook his head at the question in Kaja’s eyes. ‘This was before my time. And Roy Stille, who has been an officer here since the dawn of time, went to the house, but only Odd and Karen were there. And they both said the same. The boy had gone out hunting and hadn’t returned. But this was in April.’
‘Not hunting season?’
Aslak shook his head. ‘And since then no one has seen him. The following year, Karen went missing. Folk here believe it was the grief that broke her and she took a one-way ticket off a cliff.’
Kaja thought she detected a little quiver in the officer’s voice, but concluded it must have been the wine.
‘What do you believe?’ she asked.
‘I believe it’s true. The boy was caught by an avalanche. He suffocated under the snow. The snow melted and he was carried into a lake and that’s where he is. With his mother, let’s hope.’
‘Sounds nicer than the bear story, anyway.’
‘Well, it isn’t.’
Kaja looked up at Aslak. There was no laughter in his eyes now.
‘Buried alive in an avalanche,’ he said, and his gaze wandered out of the window, to the drifting snow. ‘The darkness. The loneliness. You can’t move, it holds you in its iron grip, laughs at your attempts to free yourself. The certainty that you’re going to die. The panic, the mortal fear when you can’t breathe. There’s no worse way to go.’
Kaja took a gulp of wine. She put down the glass. ‘How long were you lying there?’ she asked.
‘I thought it was three, maybe four hours,’ Aslak said. ‘When they dug me out, they said I had been trapped for fifteen minutes. Another five and I would have been dead.’
The waiter came and asked if they wanted anything else; he would call last orders in ten minutes. Kaja said no, and the waiter responded by putting the bill in front of Aslak.
‘Why does Utmo carry a gun?’ Kaja asked. ‘As far as I’m aware, it isn’t the hunting season now.’
‘He says it’s because of beasts of prey. Self-defence.’
‘Are there any here? Wolves?’
‘He never tells me exactly what kind of animal he means. By the way, there’s a rumour going round that at night the boy’s ghost walks the plains. And that if you see him, you have to be careful, because it means there’s a sheer drop or an avalanche nearby.’